AGENDA WILL BE AVAILABLE SOON.

Past Events

The European Capital Markets Institute (ECMI) is calling for a submission of research papers on European capital markets and their functioning. A committee of academics and international experts will select the best paper and award the winning author €5,000 and give him/her the opportunity to present the findings at the 2017 ECMI Annual Conference in Brussels, an international event that brings together hundreds of policymakers, academics and industry representatives.

With the aim of improving investor protection, MiFID II takes a firmer stance by imposing new/additional requirements in several areas, including dealings with eligible counterparties, suitability and appropriateness, inducements, conflicts of interest and cross-selling practices in the financial sector. The implementation of these requirements poses multiple challenges for both financial service providers and investors.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, banks have accumulated about a trillion euro of non-performing loans (NPLs) in their balance sheets. The high levels of NPLs in countries such as Italy, Greece and Portugal constrain their banks’ lending abilities, which causes delays in the countries’ economic recovery.

How the financial industry and supervisors deal with the new regulatory framework for data (obligation to supply financial instruments reference data, pre- and post-trade transparency, transaction reporting, best execution, consolidated tape etc.) will largely determine the transition to a MiFID II-compliant environment. The volume and nature of the data to be processed, the complexity of the analytical processes, and stringent reporting requirements present great challenges ahead.

The use of central counterparties (CCPs) has increased markedly in recent years. The decision to shift from bilateral to central clearing of standardised over-the-counter derivatives concentrates risks in a couple of CCPs, which has potentially negative effects on the financial sector and the broader economy in the unlikely event that a CCP fails.

Between 2011 and 2015, global investment in FinTech increased eightfold. Resulting from the use of enabling digital technologies, new products and processes are being developed by “traditional” providers and by ever-rising numbers of FinTech startups. While policy-makers are gradually creating the necessary conditions to strengthen this digital transformation of financial services, numerous policy issues and unanswered questions remain. Against that background, CEPS, ECRI and ECMI are jointly organising their Annual Conference on “Developing the FinTech ecosystem: the challenges of regulation, innovation and digitalisation”.